Forget expensive recycling consultants, the people we really need to put in charge of the UK's waste management are Birmingham council circa 1950. There are a few health and safety issues to iron out first, of course – manholes in the floor that open on to raging furnaces, say – but they had the right idea when it came to sorting rubbish, salvaging anything of any worth, and running their electric dustcarts off the energy generated by those fiery, roaring "destructors".

That, at least, was the general thrust of The Secret Life of Rubbish (BBC4), as much a warning about the perils of consumerism as the story of how Britain forgot how to recycle and then belatedly realised it had better remember again (I assume. It concludes next week). Not that Birmingham's slow, sweet-faced electric dustbin vans could cope with the current volume of waste Britain creates: the fleet of sleepy, insect-like vehicles would probably have run out of juice before collecting a fraction of it.

In any case, we don't leave everything out for the binmen any more. We take the big stuff to the local tip. And in the 60s we transported half a country's worth of old, quality furniture there and junked it – anything that got left behind has presumably already appeared on our current era's great glut of antiques television.

This was an interesting and provocative documentary, cannily broadcast in the runup to Christmas when we're hastily acquiring even more stuff we don't need. Although the lady who joyfully viewed a visit to the tip as brimming with social possibilities might have been going a bit far. I'd like to see her try that at my local refuse centre, where the staff are so fiercely efficient they would sweep you up if you paused for a conversation.

The binmen featured here were particularly charming, not least in their apparent affection for a mucky job – witness Steve Jones, lovingly feeding choice titbits into the rasping jaws of his restored Revopak in the manner of a dogtrainer with his pooch. The show's soundtrack was pretty jolly too.

Falcón, Sky Atlantic's dramatisation of Robert Wilson's novels, also benefits from an evocative soundscape – all soulful guitar spilling over stunning Seville landscapes and interiors. Starring Marton Csokas as the (of course) flawed, deeply troubled titular detective, the beautiful photography and heightened drama make it all a bit Inspector Montalbano by way of John Luther. Unlike BBC4's Sicilian detective series, Falcón does not require subtitles, despite being a pan-European production. As with BBC1's underrated and unrecommissioned Zen, in which Rufus Sewell played Michael Dibdin's Venetian policeman, the dialogue comes in English, as does the source material. Some find regional British accents distracting in a foreign setting, but I have no such problem. Theatre's been doing this since before television was even invented, after all.

This was the third episode of Falcón, but the first instalment of a two-part adventure, The Silent and the Damned, which opened with the murder of an informer in typically violent style; a tongue was cut out as a none-too-subtle symbol of what happens to those who like to talk.

Not that there's a great deal of subtlety about Falcón anyway. It looks sensational, the plots are satisfyingly twisty, and Csokas does the whole sexy, brooding genius thing with style. (There must be a special suit shop for glowering detective types to which other men are denied entry.) But credibility and character are sometimes sacrificed for pace, and the script has great chunks of pure exposition: "Your father used to say when you look at people, it is as if you were weighing up their soul," Pablo (Robert Lindsay) told our hero Javier, as lines thudded home, heavy as the encaustic tiles covering his immaculate villa floor.

Still, the plot remains gripping. I might not miss the dialogue, but I definitely won't miss next week's finale.

Rather like the Jungfraubahn cog railway, which misses the best of the scenery by making much of its steep ascent to the peak underground, the show doesn't always showcase its subject matter perfectly. The balance is not quite right: I'd rather we had more trains, or more Edwardians, or more of the heartbreakingly beautiful scenery that provided a backdrop throughout, than this not-entirely-cohesive mixture of travelogue, history lesson and love-letter to the railway.

Perhaps the secret is in covering less ground. The UK's trains might be a pathetic joke when compared with their Swiss counterparts, but I far preferred previous series, when Portillo was confined to their idiosyncratic timetable – delays and all.